NES Tributes: Donkey Kong

A Offbeat Look At A Plummer On A Quest To Rescue His Girlfriend From A Giant Monkey.

The game that started it all. The primary basis of the Nintendo revolution started here. Did it make sense? Not really. Did we care? No. Was it a hoot to play. YES YES YES!

Unless you've lived on a different planet since the 80's you've had your paws on a NES controller sometime in your life. Rather you played as Mario, or as Donkey Kong in the Super Nintendo generation, you we're apart of the biggest gaming movements EVER! It's no secret that Mario, and Donkey Kong are two of the most familiar faces circulating within the video game world. They're images have been plastered on countless posters, t-shirts, dolls, action figures ect. They've made history in the pages of the Guiness Book Of World Records, had syndicated television series' who knows what else? Maybe even a church. Like every great legacy, their's a beginning. This is where it started...

We start with what looks like a beat up tower, ruled by on angry gorilla throwing barrels down the ramps. There's no real story-line, but you see the blonde lady shouting "HELP!" So what are you going to do? Your going to scale this tower, smack that naughty monkey in the mouth, and sail off into the pixilated sunset with your flat-chested. Simple enough. Well, DK isn't alone in his quest to ultimately stop Mario from scoring. You go against broken ladders, fire goblins, countless rolling barrels with enough genius to roll down certian ladders on their own. It seems helpless, but we have to to save our fair maiden, what can you do?

HAMMER TIME! Your almost invincible to anything now! You can smash the smithereens out of barrels, the fire things, but the main drawback is that you can't climb ladders while carrying the thing. So it's best to just wait till you was to the second to last floor, so you could climb up and grab your lady. I think everyone knows what happens when all the smoke clears, and we make it to Paula's flat...

He snatches her away, and carries her to the next whacked out building. It eventually ends after 3 levels, and gets a bit harder as each series repeats, but we all know it's pretty common that games from back in the day would end, and repeat harder levels. It never stopped us from loving them. Now both Mario, and Donkey Kong have their respective niche's, and fan bases. They branched off into bigger, and better games, and remained seperate for a long time until Super Smash Bros. brought them back to battle.

Only this time we could see the knock-down drag-out brawl that's always been intended. Then the series came back for the GBA, and we got Mario vs. Donkey Kong, including a few hot sequels.

What lies ahead for these two juggernaut's of the electronic gaming world? Let's just hope the next generation of gaming keeps these two fighting till the end.

With All Due RespectCutsman

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N64 Donkey Kong was a total treasure hunt borefest and I'm happy you didn't mention it but I still get a kick out of the original DK and SSBM is just a riot. I'm sure the Wii SSBM will be total fun. DOOOOOOOOOOOOONKEEEEEY KONG!